trevor and jamie filing for arbitration SOUNDS concerning but what it actually does is protect them from offer sheets and allows them to keep negotiating with their teams for whatever contracts they were going for anyway. since it was filed before 5pm est it means it was the players' choices themselves (saying that it means they want to stay with the flyers).
#mytake is that this is a way to protect the players while the whole Carlsson Offer Sheet Shit Settles (hinging on ducks matching/not matching, i would be SHOCKED if ducks let leo go). people are talking about retaliatory offer sheets, and while there's no way in fuck the DUCKS offer sheet jamie and trevor they are some prime candidates for a team to offer a LOT of money to while the flyers' hands are (relatively) tied for the time being. i predict that negotiations will pick back up after the Carlsson stuff works itself out. all filing for arbitration does is add an earlier deadline for getting contracts settled. they can negotiate the term they wanted and the aav they wanted as long as it gets done BEFORE their arbitration hearings (which start in late july/early august).
the only thing to be worried about is if they DO go to arbitration: that caps the contract they can sign at 2 years maximum and (usually) sours relationships between player and team. given that jamie was apparently super close to signing his extension and trevor is likely not far behind (and seems really amicable towards flyers front office) i would not panic. i don't think this is actually going to arb we will be fine (and also filing for arbitration means that we get at least another year of them on the flyers, worst case scenario. but i dont think we brace for that)
updates on this: jamie's arbitration hearing is scheduled for july 20. trevor's is scheduled for july 22nd. which are as soon as physically possible. so this means that danny briere needs to get working Right Now to get these settled before those dates because otherwise they can only sign for 2 years maximum. granted, the last arbitration hearings are august 1st. so it would only be another week of negotiating, but when you need to lock down two players who, in the wake of the stupid leo carlsson offer sheet are going to be asking for More Money, every day counts. we shall see !
No one ever questions whether or not he belongs, whether or not he’s meant to be here. Denver blends right in. It’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.
The rest of it, well—he’ll figure it out. She will. Whatever.
Ever since he was a kid, Denver's been pretending to be a guy so he can make it to the NHL. He's not really sure when it stopped feeling like pretending.
A Totally Unbiased and Normal Person’s Thoughts on the Flyers Offseason
A happy offseason and a very happy draft to all! If you heard someone scream “UGH, MOTHER FUCKER” on the draft broadcast when Maksim Sokolovskii was drafted, sorry, that was me (nothing against the guy, I just think the Flyers shouldn’t have traded down and should’ve just gotten Ryan Lin at 21). I feel like there’s a lot of pandemonium about the Flyers offseason (and a lot of speculation to boot) so I wanted to write up a little something about how the offseason is going/some loadbearing things we can expect (largely pertaining to Jamie and Trevor). Also, I’m bored in an airport and my flight is delayed. So I need to fill the time (expect many parenthetical sidebars). I have a lot of thoughts on trades, new contracts, and potential signings/moves. Apologies for redundancy and/or typos, I am sleep deprived, caffeinated, and high on watching Gavin McKenna go to the Leafs in person.
(Keeping things under the cut so that I don’t flood your dash with yapping)
Trades So Far:
First: the elephant of the Andrae and Ersson trade to the Leafs for Benoit and Woll. As a Leafs fan first, I fucking LOVE this trade (and have explained why day-of but continue to think it was good) on both sides. Flyers needed to get rid of Ersson if they wanted to be competitive (sorry, I know he’s beloved, but he is Not A Good Goalie and has already been traded to the Senators who have DIRE goalie needs rn), and they have a bit of a roadblock with about eight million defensemen. Obviously, Andrae has great upside and I love what he did with the flyers, but he was not getting the amount of time he deserved and was going to be fighting for a spot with Bonk or Jiříček.
Benoit is a big guy who doesn’t do a lot but can get physical and I see him slotting in that 7D spot in Philadelphia, which isn’t terrible (he’s a vibes guy, he’s funny, he is an ex-Duck). Flyers likely acquired him to make the trade equal value for Joseph Woll, whom I love for every reason. He’s a fantastic goalie (traded because the Leafs have a logjam at goalie and are probably clearing space for the eventual starting role Calder Cup MVP Artur Akhtyamov will hold) and great dude and I am SO psyched for him to be a proper tandem with Vladař! They’re both injury-prone and will likely flourish as a true tandem where they can share the load. Good trade by the Flyers, good trade by the Leafs!
The Hathaway trade means very little. Again, another beloved guy creating a total logjam for the Flyers prospects who really do need to be playing NHL games. No harm, no foul in my opinion. We’re retaining half his contract for a year, but since a bunch of retained contracts and buyouts recently expired for the Flyers, don’t think of his $1.2 million retained salary as anything other than a minor annoyance. It’ll be gone next year anyways. Thank you, Gart Angry, for the missed empty net that convinced me we’d miss the playoffs, as well as the shorthanded playoff goal that I didn’t know you knew how to score.
Contracts:
Now for the big stuff that has been making my tummy hurt: new contracts. Comparatively speaking, the Flyers have very few contracts they need to manage this year, which is a good thing for Briere! Less to juggle now and more opportunities to set up plenty of cap space for eventual Michkov/Martone/Foerster contracts which will probably be LARGE. Most stuff will really start going on July 1 (when Unrestricted Free Agents are eligible to sign with any team of their choosing), but Restricted Free Agents can sign new contracts with their current teams whenever (and many already have).
Starting with the one we’ve heard the most on: Vladař! As I’m typing this I literally JUST got a notification from TheScore that they’re closing in on a 5 year, 5.5$ million extension (and as I continue to write, JFresh has posted Vladař has signed, so yay). For a guy who’s 28 and was the team’s main starter after being a career backup, this is super reasonable. Especially with the salary cap climbing pretty steeply the next few years, 5x$5.5 is a team-friendly contract (though I will reserve total judgment until I can see what his trade protection looks like - currently he has an 8-team no trade clause, which is, again, reasonable), so I feel good about this one. Vladař himself has also said plenty (even before the season ended) that he wanted to stay and get a contract done quickly, so this isn’t surprising. We also drafted two Czech goalies in this draft, and he seems excited about them both, which is great.
Moving up to the blue line, let’s talk about defense! Getting it out of the way now: Noah Juulsen will not get another deal. Benoit does everything he could and SIGNIFICANTLY better, and, again, lineup logjam keeping players like Bonk from getting the icetime they need. Before I get to the elephant in the room, I guess I need to explain the difference between Restricted and Unrestricted Free Agents. UFAs are simple: after July 1, they are able to sign wherever they want, talk to whatever team they want, and tell their previous team to pound sand. UFAs have the most leverage and generally speaking it takes a certain number of seasons for a signed player to become a UFA. I am going to link PuckPedia’s Capology page here if you want to dig into literally any term you don’t get. Highly recommend! PuckPedia is kind of the best site ever for sickos like us.
Restricted Free Agents get way more complicated (to the point that I just paid 20 dollars for a sandwich and an energy drink to give myself the mental fortitude to think about it). If you don’t meet one of the eight billion ways to be a UFA at the end of your contract (read: if you’re coming off an entry-level deal or haven’t played a ton of games), you are under team control, and it takes more work for you to go somewhere else. This team control is why RFAs are usually regarded as “lower priority” contracts by teams, because there’s far less urgency to get them locked up before July 1st as they can’t just walk away.
There’s a series of options for RFAs, starting with the qualifying offer. These are due by July 1 but can only be accepted afterwards, and it’s basically the team stating that they want to keep the player (players not offered a QO become UFAs). There’s a lot of math based on how much a player’s past salary was and what that means their QO needs to be, but think of it like a cost of living raise - you always have to offer at least their previous salary. For Jamie, this is $2.3 million and $5.75 million for Trevor. Players who get qualified often negotiate their way up to a higher AAV, so this is often just a procedural thing.
At this point, players are allowed to reject their QO, but they often just go without accepting it (as it expires after about 2 weeks). They remain RFAs, so do not take a player letting a QO lapse as a sign that they’re leaving. Again, negotiating higher is normal. At this point, RFAs are now up for Offer Sheets. Jamie and Trevor are both eligible to be offer sheeted, and this is theoretically the “scariest” part of contract negotiations, where other teams can try to sweep in and nab them.
Offer Sheets are when a different team swoops in to try to nab these (typically young, typically underpaid) players, offering draft picks in compensation to the original team (a note here: these have to be the team’s own draft picks. For example, the Stars can’t offer sheet Trevor with a pick they traded for from the Sharks. It has to be an all-original Stars pick). There are different tiers of what picks in what drafts need to be packaged for different salary ranges. If a player gets offer sheeted, their original team has a week to match the offer and can reject the other team’s proposal - this is a huge part of being “under team control.” They’re exciting but EXTREMELY rare, so I fully do not anticipate Jamie or Trevor getting offer sheeted nor do I anticipate the Flyers letting them go.
The last thing that can happen with RFAs is arbitration. In short: team and player disagree on what their salary should be (often cap-strapped teams are heavily resistant to giving players lower on the depth chart what they probably should make), they go and argue it out for a one or two-year deal. This happens later in the summer and I will be dooming if I see it coming. But it won’t happen.
So, Jamie and Trevor are negotiating new contracts! I think they’ll get done fairly quickly (anticipating Jamie first, as Trevor is represented by Pat Brisson, who currently has his hands full with the Dylan Larkin bullshit), as they and the Flyers have indicated that they want to stay together.
The two parts of contract negotiations that impact each other are length and value. In general: higher value, lower term (team has to commit to paying a player a lot of money for a shorter time, players are often gambling on upside and the idea that they will renegotiate for even more money sooner, especially as the cap continues to climb) and vice versa (the longer you commit to a player, the lower financial burden you want to have).
Jamie is simple. I think he goes for a longer-term contract at a lower AAV (defensemen generally get paid less than forwards, but Luke Hughes fucked up the market last year by negotiating a crazy high deal, and additionally Jamie is a right-shot defender, which comes at a premium in a mostly left-shot league), somewhere around 6 years at maybe $6.25 million. People are going to argue that means he’s being overpaid, but I think that’s horseshit. He’s a blossoming 2-way defenseman with high-level skating ability who has developed incredibly when it comes to defense and his offense is finally taking another step (playoffs were a fantastic example). Players negotiate based on their teammates’ value and other league comparables, so we need to keep in mind that Cam York is making $5.15 million and had a… less than ideal season. Jamie, signing in a year where the cap has gone up since then and arguably has a higher ceiling, can fetch more than that but is likely to take a team-friendly deal as he seems like he really loves it in Philly. 6x$6.2 feels reasonable with the oodles of cap space the Flyers have and will mature into a great value contract if he stays healthy and continues on his development track.
Trevor is a bit of a wild card. Having been acquired in a contract year, he’s had less time with the Flyers to demonstrate how he fits in the system, and there are some worries that his bounceback year is the result of some new scenery and that he will regress next year. As an endless optimist and player rights advocate, I disagree and think that his ceiling is much higher than that, especially if he continues to really work as a center. He’s less predictable in that he’s far more likely to be an aggressive negotiator. I really can’t tell if he’ll go for a shorter deal and gamble on his production continuing to increase, or if he’ll go for a longer term contract, especially considering he missed training camp to negotiate with Pat Verbeek the last time he needed a new deal.
Personally, selfishly, I want him to go long-term. This also requires commitment by the Flyers to believe that he’s going to be their guy for years to come, which is actually the part I’m a little shakier on. However, Briere likes handing out longer deals and I’ve heard some analysts/insiders say they’re actually leaning longer term, so I’m hopeful that we actually get something at a minimum of 5 years. AAV-wise, I think a shorter (3-year) deal would put him somewhere above $9 million, while a longer deal might land him somewhere between $7.5 and $8.5 million. My final estimate: 5x$8.25 million - not the highest-paid on the team, but in general, I don’t think there’s a world where he makes less than Sean Couturier’s (extremely bloated) contract. This is another contract that will age well as the cap increases, and then when Trevor is 30, if he’s killing it, he can really go for a crazy-huge contract.
The issue with guys like Jamie and Trevor who have signed bridge deals right out of their ELCs is that it screws up their “UFA value” that comes into play when signing RFAs to term. There’s a high chance the Flyers actually have to pay Trevor that $9 million even to keep him at term because they’ll have him for seasons where he otherwise would’ve been a UFA. It’s just a lot of negotiating what hypothetical future value he may have, and is a pretty big gamble on the side of the player and team (neither of them wants to be wrong, but the numbers that are the best for them point in opposite directions).
Regardless, I remain positive that Jamie and Trevor will 1. Get their bag and 2. Get to play together for a while. If the Flyers bag a real 1C and Trevor’s ceiling is at 2C or as a top-line winger, that’s great! Jamie has legitimate first-pair upside and I think he realizes that in a year or two once Ristolainen is elsewhere. These are two guys that the Flyers CLEARLY want to keep and think are part of a winning core and culture (to the point that I wouldn’t be surprised if Jamie gets to wear an A at some point in this upcoming season, again, trades pending). We stay positive!! We will pop bottles!! And at the bottom of it all, Danny loves a yaoi-based narrative and frequently makes the managerial decisions that will make the players happy and allow them to stay with their buddies, which bodes well for these guys. Remember, he was trying to get Trevor since he acquired Jamie. Package deal, do not separate!
Other Trade Rumblings/Whispers:
My flight is finally almost boarding, so I’ll keep this quick. I’ve really only seen a few potential trade targets for the Flyers, which are mostly the big fish this year: Werenski, Robertson, Larkin, etc. These guys are either RFAs or have requested trades, so Flyers can’t just throw money at them (and they have MONEY) and hope it works.
On Werenski: Flyers could take a swing at him, but should only do so if they have a landing place for Risto. I’ve seen people suggest that Risto/Tippett could be a return package, but more speculate that the Blue Jackets would demand Martone or Michkov, both of whom Briere seems extremely reluctant to let go of (which I agree with, Martone is a future core piece and Michkov was great, even for a down year and it would be extremely shortsighted to let him go, especially if Werenski won’t even stay past his current contract, which has 2 years left). Could be fun, but Flyers would need to offer the moon and the stars, assets that other teams could easily match.
On Nurse: I DO NOT WANT THIS TO HAPPEN. Remember the Skinner/Jarry trade, where it was like the same player going in both directions? That’s what a Risto for Nurse trade would be (which is what people are speculating, with some picks thrown in), except for the fact that Darnell Nurse is on a nine million dollar contract for four more years. Holy overpay, Batman. I don’t care how much pressure is on Briere to get rid of Risto/make a move, THIS WOULD BE BAD.
On Robertson: he’s an RFA, so the Flyers would need to offer up their 2027 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, all of which they own and can trade. This is doable, but would likely be a sign-and-trade situation as Dallas attempts to recoup the loss of a highlight roster player. I think, like Werenski, the Flyers just don’t have the roster assets to make a compelling package to the Stars (prior to the draft, Seattle, Dallas, and Toronto were in discussions for a three-way trade that would give Seattle Robertson, Toronto 7th overall pick, and Dallas Matthew Knies. Moon and stars, people). Flyers also have an overabundance of wingers, and while Robertson is INCREDIBLE (I do love the Stars), I don’t think he fills an immediate need that would take the Flyers to immediate contention status. And, as a Stars fan, I want him to stay in Dallas, and it seems like he does too (the aforementioned trade didn’t go through because Robertson exercised his no-move clause to veto it).
On Larkin: what the fuck ever, Larkin is being extremely picky about where he wants to go, and the Flyers are not high on his list. Steve Yzerman is also not a good GM, but he also said after the draft that he might not even honor Larkin’s trade request. I’m all for players’ rights, but it’s kind of funny. In conclusion: don’t think it’s happening.
My flight is boarding so I hope this is enlightening! Pop an anon in my inbox if you want to know about any other players/contracts/speculation :) YAY
jamie with his big round eyes and demur demeanor might seem like he is the deer. and trevor with his big personality and his free wheeling joie de vivre may lead you to believe he is the f150. but actually if you understand. trevor is the deer. jamie is the f150. only if you understand
happy pride month specifically to trevor zegras who said the jamie trade™️ hurt more than the broken ankle he got not even 24 hours after the trade and then shortly after got a gf who looked sm like a carbon copy of jamie that even the hockey bros made comments about it ❤️ 🧡💛💚💙💜
when i say no one gets trevor like i do i mean no one listens to a remix of nintendo ds mahjong music and goes "wow trevor hype moments and aura" except me
origamiaround
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prguitarman
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